


The First One

by illyriantremors



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, Az POV, Comfort, Dancing, F/M, Fluff, Starfall, prequel fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 00:06:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8122858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyriantremors/pseuds/illyriantremors
Summary: It's the first Starfall without Rhys and Morrigan is simply beside herself at Starfall without her cousin there to complete the family though she tries to put on a brave face for Velaris to see in the High Lord's absence. So Az steps in to comfort her and provide a distraction for her with a little dancing near Rita's.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for Day 1′s prompt "Dancing" for Moriel Week hosted by @acotarshipweek on Tumblr.

I found her sitting all on her own on one of the balconies high above the House of Wind where she could watch the party below her. She was neither a part of it nor outside of it. Merely a spectator unable to move closer. She wouldn’t let herself tonight. It was a wonder any of us had even made it without…

I sighed, feeling the shadows grip my pulse to soothe. We were all dealing in our own way. Amren hadn’t bothered to show, nothing unusual for her to miss Starfall. Cassian had given half the night his best go before giving in to the liquor and retiring early. And Morrigan sat watch above it all wishing the crown was on Rhysand’s head where it belonged and not her own. Cauldron only knew what he was up to Under the Mountain with _her_.

But Morrigan knew she couldn’t leave Velaris without someone to look to for encouragement tonight even if she stood apart from the crowds to do it. Rhysand would want her there both for the sake of his court and herself. He’d want her to be happy. He would want all of us to be happy even if we couldn’t really be. Not tonight.

A good hour went by in which I stood against the stone wall just watching Morrigan sit and idly drink her champagne. The glass was still half-full by the time I moved closer as if she were so heartbroken to spend a Starfall without her cousin - the one she teased and tormented mercilessly on a normal day - that her appetite wasn’t interested. Even the dress she wore of deepest black, though it sparkled like the night sky above us, seemed to suggest a state of mourning.

She kept her gaze firmly ahead of her as I sat down on the hard stone bench. She’d fixed it somewhere between the souls plummeting through the sky and the fae dancing below, only appearing to take it all in when really she was trying desperately to ignore it. But her shoulders gave a little shake that told me she was fully aware of my presence and maybe feeling a little too vulnerable tonight. For a moment, I wondered if it were a mistake to invade her personal space on so intimate a night as Starfall when I knew what it was costing her and would continue to do so for the next fifty years. But an hour watching her stoop lower and lower into her depression was too much.

“Morrigan,” I said softly trying to throw some of the shadows off my face. She shook her head in a tight, short movement refusing to meet me. One more time. I would try one more time and then leave her be before I made the night worse.

Gingerly, I laid my palm against her hand where it sat gripping the stone seat in a hard embrace, her knuckles gone white with pain that mirrored something stirring in my heart. “Morrigan,” I tried again. Her eyes closed and her head fell down quickly avoiding me, but I lifted her chin in my hand to let her know it was okay, not forcing her towards me just yet. She could look if she wanted and I would be there to catch her if she did.

“Az-” My name died on her lips. Her body starting to shake, she finally looked at me and the grief was written all over her. I rubbed my thumb tenderly across her cheek as I kept hold of her chin, hoping there was some comfort in the touch for her over the repulsion of having to feel my scarred hands on her skin. “He should be…” she started, and then, “we… I-”

Her face broke as the sob released itself. She fell against me, her arms winding around my neck as she cried into my chest. I couldn’t help from nuzzling into her golden hair that fell on my neck just under my chin. My fingers ran over it trying to soothe the ache in her heart. If I could, I would siphon it out, take every last morsel of hurt she felt and ball it up into a little seed that I could take out of her and put in me to grow instead until her pain was mine and she was free again.

I hated seeing her like this. Centuries of war and fighting hadn’t broken her the way losing Rhys had. I didn’t know if it was the not knowing what was happening to him that did it or the possibility it would stay this way forever even after the fifty years were up, or both, but Morrigan hadn’t seemed this lost to herself since her father put that nail in her stomach.

Our family was in pieces. We all knew it. That was why none of us were together on the one night of the year we always should be. Take one of us out of the equation and the rest of us fell apart, ceased to function. Taking away Rhys was like removing our collective heart: you just can’t live without it.

“I know,” I said against her ear, but just as much for my benefit as her own. I said it over and over until the crying slowed and she began to quiet.

“What are we going to do?” she asked pitifully when she finally managed to stop sobbing enough to pull her head away from my chest and look at me, though I noticed she didn’t leave the safety of my arms. Her eyes were a deep brown staring up at me begging for an answer to her prayers, but unlike most days, tonight they were hollow and bottomless, as if she or I might topple through them and never land. What would it take to see them sparkle again with the gold flecks they hid like fire flying through the Heavens? To see the smile rise so high on her face the corners of her eyes crinkled like they sometimes did when she thought something truly wonderful?

Nothing could truly fix tonight for her or any of us, but I’d let too many wasted days and nights go by robbed of Morrigan’s smile to let another one pass on. So I said the one thing I could think of that was special to her and that would never make Starfall what it should be, but maybe for a few minutes we could at least pretend.

“They’re salsa dancing over by Rita’s, if you want.”

Morrigan stared at me for a long minute in which my heart nearly gave out. And then, she sighed. “Take me, Az.”

I scooped her up into my arms cradling her against my chest and shot off into the night. The wind tickled our cheeks as we flew. I landed up just down the street from Rita’s where we could hear the music outside thrumming a lively melody. Most dancing on Starfall was more free and untamed, but I knew this was the style I knew Morrigan liked best.

I hadn’t always danced. It wasn’t easy for me, but it was Morrigan’s favorite art form in all of Prythian. Once Rhysand gave us Velaris for a home, Mor had begged me for years to come out with her to dance and always I had refused. My feet were clumsy for the uncontrolled steps of dance. My body had been honed for battle, not for rhythm and the innate feel of a drum beat. Not to mention the thought of touching her so personally with my scarred and warped skin crashed my system so thoroughly with fear and cowardice.

But then Morrigan caught me unawares one night and showed me that not all dancing was loose and innovated on the spot. There were other dances, dances you had to practice, had to take care in to learn the steps. It was like a battle itself, the footwork carefully choreographed to match your partner’s moves as you would in a duel, the arms guiding and following against one another with the music as a pair of swords would locked in a fight.

Salas morphed into cha-chas shifted into tangos and foxtrots and finally the dizzying enchanting glide of the waltz. And through every new dance, Morrigan would just laugh her head off at me with that smug _I told you so_ look on her face I loved as I nimbly lifted her through the air.

But the touching still scared me. My hands on her waist longed to burn through the fabric of her dress to reign fire and warmth I didn’t have down her skin at every slow, heated dance. And when we waltzed, it didn’t matter that our bodies hardly touched at all; an ocean could have swam between us, but our eyes would lock and our hands would tighten their grip and it didn’t matter that there was the ocean separating us so long as we could drown in it together.

Tonight, the music was alive and cheerful in celebration of another Starfall. I led Morrigan into the middle of the small square where a group of fae danced away to the steady count of the music. Strings of lanterns hung above us lighting the space in a low, warm glow.

And we danced, at first slow and careful unsure if we were allowed to let our enjoyment drown out our guilt at forgetting Rhys for even a few minutes. But our skin continued to touch, our eyes continued to find each other, and our feet moved us through the merry music until finally I stepped forward to spin Morrigan out and found her spinning back into me with a wild smile lighting her up. When she collided with my chest, I froze, temporarily lost in her joy, so grateful to have it back in my life for one precious moment, that I couldn’t move.

I didn’t realize until that moment how dark my night had been without that smile. And it was all because our brother wasn’t there. What horrors was he facing Under the Mountain? Was he looking up at the same stars we were and thinking of us too? _Had she even let him out to see it?_ My heart couldn’t keep up with the realizations of my mind and my body stilled completely refusing to dance another step.

Morrigan seemed to notice the shift in me even before I had stopped moving. I kept my face a mask as much as I could, but the shadows betrayed me by moving away as her face came near my own and I had nowhere to hide. Mor leaned her forehead against my own and sighed, but her smile hadn’t disappeared entirely.

“I know,” she said quietly, just as I had for her on the balcony. “I miss him, too.” I closed my eyes and nodded in silent acknowledgement of the truth she and I both bore. “Thank you for dancing with me,” she said and her voice was now just a whisper on the darkness of the night.

“It was my pleasure,” I replied, pulling back from where our heads met. A new song began to play and I looked at Mor in silent question. _Again?_ Her lips turned up and her hands squeezed on mine as we stepped back into the dance of the square.

“Yes, Az,” Mor said ghosting a chuckle. “Again.”

 _Again_ , she said, and in my heart I replied, _Forever_.

xx


End file.
